This is ULTRAsomething's second installment in the "Sensibility Series." It features thousands of words, grouped into hundreds of sentences — a handful of which are actually about the topic it purports to discuss: the Leica M Monochrom (Type 246). I should also mention that it's populated with over a dozen actual photos — and not a one of them falls into the category of "pretty marketing shot" or "test shot." Undeterred? Then read on.

What if Jane Austin had the opportunity to test and compare Leica's new Type 246 M Monochrom camera against both the existing Monochrom and the M Type 240? Would her first published work have been a tale of romantic fiction? Or would it have been something closer to this?

In this world, there are things that motivate and things that demotivate. Curiously, what motivates one person might be exactly the same thing that demotivates someone else. Case in point: exotic vacations to scenic locales. For many people, such trips stimulate an outpouring of photographic activity. But for me, the only thing they stimulate is a bout with photographic apathy. Which is why, on a recent late-winter trip to Iceland, I decided to counter my expected languor by doing the opposite of what I would usually do. I would yin every yang.

Does a song need an evolving melody in order to be called a song? Or can something else evolve in its place? Composer and sound designer, Alessandro Cortini claims the latter. And it's a claim I've just appropriated to help describe my latest photographic tendencies.

Grainy. Blurry. Out-of-focus. To the average photographer, these are characteristics to avoid at all cost. Fortunately, I never claimed to be "the average photographer." So for all you not-so-average photographers seeking to infuse some low-fidelity grunge into your high-fidelity world, I present the Olympus Pen EE-2 camera for your consideration.

Like telegraphs, typewriters, turntables and anvils, the Voigtlander Vito III 35mm folding camera is a relic of an earlier time. To many, that makes it obsolete. But for those who truly enjoy the act of photography, its antediluvian origins do not equate to uselessness. Distilled of all bells and whistles, it performs the same fundamental function as any current-generation digital SLR or mirrorless marvel — it takes photographs. And it does it quite nicely.

Part 2 of the Caffenolog ostensibly discusses developing Acros 100 in Caffenol-C-M. But because this is an ULTRAsomething article, that whole caffenol angle might actually be an elaborate excuse to further hone my Hasselblad XPan skills (and the word "skills," as used here, is infused with irony). Then again, it's entirely possible that both the Caffenol and Xpan threads are diversionary tactics, meant to obfuscate the true topic — my distaste for being labeled "a blogger." Likelier still, it's all of the above.

In Parts 1 and 2 of this series, I spent a tremendous number of words discussing the merits of Sigma's Foveon sensor for BW photography. In this article, I'll look specifically at the DP3 Merrill as a camera, rather than as a box that holds a Foveon sensor.

After Part 1's discussion of the theoretical advantages of Sigma's Foveon sensor for BW photography, this next installment looks at the BW process in detail, making it even nerdier than Part 1. The article includes a discussion of the tonal differences between BW photos taken with Sigma cameras vs. BW photos converted from color images taken with "traditional" digital cameras. It then segues into an examination of the BW workflow required by Sigma, including both the advantages and disadvantages of the process, plus my recommendations for improving both the process and the cameras.